Monday, 26 September 2016

The mark of the beast

I
was going to tell you about our family’s mini camping expedition, but that’s
set on one side for a moment – other things are occupying my mind.

THREE
STRANDS OF CONCERN fill my consciousness as I watch the world and its ways.

THE
FIRST is how we treat the Earth – our mother, our home, on which we utterly
depend for every breath and morsel of food, for all our wellbeing. The Earth is
the beloved gift of our Father God and belongs to him. God loves the Earth and
all he has made, he calls it good. The Earth is alive. Everything of Earth –
even the still, silent parts like the rock and the dust – is alive. It is
ensouled. God has a covenant with all creation upon Earth – and that means the
whole being of the Earth in all its forms is spiritual, first of all because
God raised it all into being and God is spirit, second because God could not
enter into a covenant with anything less than spiritual (it would be
meaningless, like a human marrying a cardboard box).

We
are accountable to God for how we cherish, love, respect the living Earth. Even
if we weren’t, to desecrate and despoil it would be madness – where else is
there for us to go?

Consumerism
and growth economics are the problem here.

The
fracking, the oil pipelines, the dirty energy, the cutting down of the forests
for profit, the dangerous nuclear power stations, the proliferation of plastics
– these are evils. I am implicated, I participate in them, but I recognise that
they are evils, and it is my responsibility to try to disentangle myself from
them. I cannot see a way to do so immediately and simply, but I can at least
make a beginning. It can be a process and a direction even it is not a finished
accomplishment.

THE
SECOND strand of concern is political corruption. Those of you reading outside
the UK may be unaware of the recent political turbulence in our Labour Party –
but it has been, and continues to be, shameful. The machinations and underhand strategems, the disloyalty and destructive self-ambition have been overt. People have
been disenfranchised in tens of thousands, while those who held power have used
it for no good democratic purpose.

The
self-serving activities of our politicians is no news, of course. My own MP,
committed to climbing the greasy pole of power, has used the government
departments with which she has been entrusted, not to serve the common good but
as material to advance her own career.

David
Cameron and George Osborne during their time in office likewise ran the country
as a business – the land as a commodity, the people as a labour force, the
owners and shareholders themselves and their cronies. To them, these islands
were a mine from which they extracted what they could in the time they had.

Our
present administration sees the whole purpose of life as being to get as much
as you can for yourself regardless of the cost to others and to the living
Earth. They see the Earth as there only for extraction, for milking, for
sucking out every ‘resource’, every consumable and saleable commodity. They see
other people as allies or competitors – and as scarcity deepens, only as
competitors in the end. Those they see as allies are not friends – there is no
loyalty in the matter; an ‘ally’ is, for them, someone who serves their
interests at the present time. A rung to step on.

This
outlook is ungodly and evil; which is to say, it is inherently incapable of
resulting in social wellbeing or human blessing. It is rotten.

THE
THIRD strand of concern is violence. The systematized murder of black people in
America. The UK collusion with Saudi bombing in the Yemen. George Osborne
chortling as the bombers went off to blast poor, beleaguered Aleppo: ‘Britain’s
got its mojo back.’ The plans to build a wall enclosing the refugees at Calais.
The savage income cuts to poor and disabled people. The cruel indifference to
refugees. The mountain of money made every year from the sale of weapons. The
culling of badgers and clubbing of fox cubs, the shooting of birds for sport.
The intensive farms and terrible abbatoirs, factories of terror. The
subjugation of women by men, rape as a tool of war, as a punishment, as an
accepted way of life. The assassinations and interventions to destabilize human
communities with the intent to capitalize from that instability. Beheadings and
shootings and the right to bear arms – the whole vile racket of war.

Violence
is the scourge and shame of the human race. Violence in all its forms debases
and diminishes us. This depravity does not rest with individual perpetrators,
it is like a terrible infection, spreading through the whole community – to
every single one of us colluding knowingly or unwittingly, and our children and
our children’s children. We are all dragged in to this loathsome, disgusting trade.
War is never glorious, war has no honor, no triumph. It is a show of pitiable
weakness, it has no strength in it at all. Peace is strength, kindness is
strength, compassion is strength – to lift the fallen, to bear the cost, to
exercise restraint, to comfort and heal and uphold, to protect and shelter the
vulnerable; these are the signs of human strength.

AND
THESE THREE STRANDS – they are not separate, they are tightly braided together.
And so systemic, ubiquitous, rooted are they, that I am fixed, trapped,
fast-bound by this tight mesh of merciless human savagery. That in which I take
refuge also takes refuge in me. It’s like the plastics that disperse into the
earth, the sea, then the fish, the plants, then are taken up again to reside in
our own flesh. I have taken refuge in the consumerist selfishness of the
murderous West; so now it has taken refuge in me. I am implicated.

I
know the power of prayer. I know the seeds of violence and of peace start small
in the impulses of the human spirit. I know the remarkable power of one small
weed breaking through the tarmac, the power of one – one purse, one voice, one
life. I know the power of starlight, of a candle lit at midnight. So I have to
try. I have to do my best.

Meditating
on these things, I felt that the way in is to gradually diminish violence in my
own life. In my faith tradition (Christianity), fasting has always been known
as a powerful form of prayer. I know that food products of animal source are
inherently violent – whether the slaughter of animals to eat, the pulling of
fish from the sea, the mass gassing of day-old male chicks in service of the
egg industry, the taking of a calf from its mother so we can have all the milk.
There is violence shot through it all. I personally have tried and failed to
follow a vegan way – my body does not flourish on a vegan diet. But I thought,
I can fast. I can abstain from much of it. I can eat just a small amount of
meat or eggs or fish from sources I trust. I can live a fasting life, eating
mostly plant-based food. And steer clear of the mischievous crops – the palm
oil, the soya.

Beyond
that, I can dress myself in second-hand clothes to diminish the pressure of
consumerism and waste. Anything I am finished with, I can pass on responsibly,
sending the least possible to landfill. I can earth-closet, I can solar-power,
I can compost. I can shop where the vegetables are not encased in plastic and
where the human rights of employees are respected. I can live frugally and send what money I can
spare to help the refugees and the people trapped in war zones. I can do my
best to raise consciousness, to speak of these things, to increase awareness. I
can speak up for the Muslim, the minority person, the cause of peace, even
where it is seen as trouble-making and finds disfavour. I can live small and
simply, live mindfully and intentionally, practice kindness and gentleness, and share. I can take responsibility for myself.
I can vote. And that way of living will be my prayer – for the Earth and the people of Earth.

I’m
not really sure what else I can do.

It
seems to me that the days of the beast are with us. The great pains of
childbirth, the prolonged and painful labour for the birth of the new creation.
May God give us the wisdom we need, the patience, and the faithfulness.

9 comments:

The best way to understand the "mark of the beast" is to actually understand its counterpoint of the mark of Messiah. The beast is the anti-Messiah, so this sort of can goes without saying, BUT it's odd that people will point to chips and all of this sort of stuff. The book of Revelation is "signified" (1:1), meaning the entire thing is done as signs. Therefore, the place to look to understand the signs is in the Scripture.

The mark or sign of the Messiah:Exodus 31:13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a SIGN between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.

Exo 31:17 It is a SIGN between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

Ezekiel 20:12 Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a SIGN between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them.

A mark in the forehead or the hand is significant of believing and doing (Deut 6:8). The 7th day sabbath as already seen a mostly successful attempt of "changing the times and seasons." As Rome re-collects with Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece (as it must per Nebuchadnezzer's dream--to be destroyed "together" by the Stone) we'll likely see a resurgence of what were known as "blue laws" here in America, stopping the shops on Sundays--no buying or selling.

I just watched the news the other night and kept thinking about a famous phrase "The Evil that Men Do" We learnt it at school - Julius Caesar I think. I always remember it and how apt it feels sometimes.

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An Inspiration

‘Let us pass through your country. We will stay on the main road; we will not turn aside to the right or to the left. Sell us food to eat and water to drink for their price in silver. Only let us pass through on foot until we cross the Jordan into the land the Lord our God is giving us.’

(Deuteronomy 2.27-28, 29b NIV UK)

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